Interview Excerpts from "Voices After the Deluge" Project

The following excerpts are drawn from the SOHP's "Voices After the Deluge" series: Ms. Renee Lee recalls awakening to rising floodwaters outside her home in the White Stocking community in Pender County: Friday morning, my mom was the first one up. She normally goes out on her deck - first thing she does in the morning - and she was hollering. So I jumped up out of the bed and run to the deck door. All I could see was water. I pushed the storm door and went on the deck. It was just like we was in the middle of the ocean. The current was very strong. As far as you can look on either side was nothing but water, just waterÖ. I put on my father's wading boots and stepped down onto the deck. The water came almost up to my chest, and I [had] just stepped down to the third step on the deck so you know that water had to be high. According to my father, it was rising about two and a half feet per hour. We had put a tape measure against the house, taped it there, to see, and it was rising fast. We knew there was no way we could get out of there, not unless we called for some helpÖ. The sheriff's department, they said that several families had notified them of the water in the areaÖ[and they] told us to meet them at the church, but we couldn't meet them at the church because the water had gone into the church. So what my dad done, he had a boat. He took his boat from the carport and pulled it around side to the deck, and he paddled us up. He paddled. Put us in the boat to meet the sheriff. It took them about four hours to come and get us out of there, you know, because he had other families before us. ÖThe police department didn't have but two boats toÖrescue people, so it was hard. It was terrifying. I would never want anybody to experience something like that.

In Rocky Mount's Candlewood neighborhood, the flood tossed this boat against a tree when Stony Creek, a Tar River tributary, became a torrent. (Photo © Martha W. Daniel, 1999.)   The owners of Cavenaugh's Restaurant plead for help in overcoming flood damage. (Photo © Rob Amberg, 1999.)   This home, like hundreds of others across the region, was destroyed by floodwaters. (Photo © Rob Amberg, 1999.)

Ms. Jessie Pash, a retired Rocky Mount elementary school teacher, describes the loss of love notes written by her late husband: [My husband] would fix my lunch [for school] sometimesÖ. He would take an old paper napkin and write a noteÖ. I said, "Why would you write a lovely little note like this on an old paper napkin that I'm going to have to throw away?" But I saved many of them. The [students] would see my napkin and say, "Miss Pash, what you got?" It was cursive, and they couldn't read it. "Miss Pash, what does it say?" One of them would say, "I see what it says down there. It says, 'I love you.'" It would just tickle them to death. But I lost so many notesÖ. I'd saved all of those little things. Those are the things that I've lost. A leading Rocky Mount businessperson and flood survivor [name withheld] describes the deep depression he felt after losing his home to the flooding: The doctor, first doctor I went to, was our family physician, and he said, "Have you considered suicide?" [My wife] was sitting there. I hated to say it in front of her, but I said, "Yes, I have." And all during the time that we stayed in the apartment, I had three pistols, you know, right there. So [my wife] was afraid to go off. She was afraid to go shopping. She was afraid to do anything, not knowing what I might do. And to say that I didn't consider it would be an absolute lie. Ms. Melba Harrell, a teacher in Wallace (Duplin County), describes her deep ambivalence about accepting relief aid: It's a humbling experience. We've never been in a situation where we had to depend on others to help us. We're typical middle-class, working-class people. We never had to depend on the government or anybody else to help usÖ. 'It is much harder to receive than it is to give' - we experienced that. That is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do in my lifeÖ. You have people bring boxes of food and clothes and money. One of the students at school came in and handed me ten dollars to buy shoes. It just was a hard place to be. I've never been there and it's much more difficult to receive than it is to give. Ms. Teisha Harrison, a housing counselor for Edgecombe and Nash Counties, describes elderly flood victims' frequent insistence on moving back to their original homes rather than relocating outside the flood plain: Working with flood recovery, [I've assisted] some of the same elderly that were there when I was growing up [so] you have that personal connectionÖ. [You've seen] how hard they've worked to get their homes paid forÖ. They've been there for years. They raised their children there. They raised their grandchildren thereÖand now to say to them that you may have to relocate - They don't want to moveÖ. They're like, "I've been here forever, sixty or seventy years. It's never flooded. Water came in the yard, but it's never been like this, and I'm not leaving, can't nobody make me leave." ÖI think a lot of times for the elderly it's different to get up and re-route to somewhere else. They're comfortable, they know their neighbors. They know what to expect when they get home. They know what the crime is. They know the corner store. They know their doctor. They've been with the same doctor for years, and they don't want to leave that. So it's a big adjustment trying to convince them that sometimes you have to leaveÖ. It's emotional, and a lot of times it takes a wear on their healthÖ. You really don't know the emotional wear that it has had on them. Rev. Bruce Allen, Methodist minister in Grifton and Kinston, counseled relief providers: [I helped] caregivers [with] sensory overload. When you deal with enough of the sorrow and junk that they have to deal with seven days a week, [working] far too many hours during the day, I could look into their eyes and tell that they were shell-shockedÖ. There are two different types of counseling. There is passive counseling, where you sit and listen, allow people to vent, allow them to cry, allow them to get that outÖ. There's also active counseling, where you step in and help someone with something. For the caregivers, I had to do moreÖactive counseling, asking them to look at their sleeping habits and their eating habits and the fact that their hands are shaking and the fact that they cannot sleep. I'd say, "I really would suggest that you need to look at pulling back some and regrouping yourself because you're not helping yourself or anyone else when you're burned out like this." Rev. Allen also describes how differently children, young adults, and the elderly responded to the flood: Children bounced back pretty quickly, especially when they started getting clothes and toys, butÖthe schoolteachers that are members of my congregation said you could tell the difference. They weren't studying very much. They weren't sleeping well. It's just that sense that there's no place for them to call home. They were going from their homes to a shelter, like at a school, then to an aunt's house or an uncle's house or grandmother's house, or to a [Federal Emergency Management Agency] trailer. I think the ones that handled the move the best are the younger adults because they had their strong backs. They had their ability to make money. They did not have their roots down as permanently as the elderly did and they said, "Yeah, we got flooded out, but we can work hard. We can buy another plot of land. We can put our trailer down. We can go on with our lives." The ones that I think suffered the most were the elderlyÖ. Not only did they have incredible roots there, not only were they losing their homes and the memories there, they were also losing their friends around them. Even those who have built back their homes call it their "house" but no longer their "home" because their home is gone. Their home is gone because their friends are gone and the community is goneÖ. Cyprus Glen retirement home in Greenville, the bottom floor flooded out. A number of those individuals in that bottom floor died shortly after they moved back to Cyprus Glen. The suspicion was that it was stress-related. They could not emotionally handle the stress of being uprooted and to go somewhere else.